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Welcome to the We Love Our Farmers photo series! We love hearing about what's happening on the Small Farm Central farms from our farmers, but we love seeing it in their websites even more. In this edition, we feature the hard working interns at Devon Point Farm.

In response to some great feedback from our farmers, we've introduced a new change to one of the core functions of Member Assembler. You may have already noticed it when you went to Create a New Season last week.

In the past, in order to have someone sign up for two or more shares, you will have had to create an option called something like "Double Share" and set the price for twice the cost of the regular share. We've now reprogrammed the Member Types so you can enable a type to have multiple quantity choices for each option. Signup for types like this will appear something like this:

This is a powerful new tool, especially for add-on type shares like eggs or meat. It provides more flexibility with your Member Types, as you can choose between enabling quantities or using the old method of creating options. In some cases, using the "option" method will be necessary, like if wanted to offer two shares at a lower cost than just twice the cost of a single share. The quantities simply act as multipliers that carry through to invoices, pickup labels, reports, and overall counts of shares. So, the cost of two shares will simply be double the cost of one, and so on.

Creating and editing your Member Types is still done at Member Assembler > Configure > Member Types. You will see the new options there. We will soon be offering some resources that will cover best practices for the feature and, of course, we'll be here to help you decide what's the best strategy for setting up your particular membership sign-up. Let us know what questions you have by calling 412-567-3864 or emailing us at support@smallfarmcentral.com.

As summer turns to fall you're likely to be thinking about the upcoming autumn harvest, but we'd like to add an extra assignment to your workload: create a new Member Assembler Season. Whether you are offering shares for a Winter CSA or trying to retain your members for next year while they are still being seduced by sweet corn, now is the time to get set up for the next session of your CSA program. It may be ages since you were standing in front of a blackboard or had to carry textbooks on your back, but it's time to go back to school and refresh yourself with the Member Assembler curriculum.

The Small Farm Central Knowledge Base is a great place to start learning about helpful Member Assembler tools, especially the Member Assembler Tools section and the Creating Seasons document. If you just started to use Member Assembler this year, the concept of "Seasons" may be new to you, so here's your first lesson:

The Member Assembler system uses the concept of "Seasons" to delineate periods of time. Whenever it is time to start a new sign-up period you will create a new Season that holds all of the information for the shares that you offer during the period of time that you choose. For example, a Season could be a whole year, or just the few months that you offer your CSA program. This system of Seasons allows you to archive older data (which you can access when needed), allows you to create new pickup locations, new prices, and allows returning members to sign up again.

Creating your new Season now, instead of when things slow down this winter, allows you to get a head start on the sign-up process. Imagine the piece of mind you will have if all of your memberships for the spring have been bought and paid for even before the winter snow melts.

Stay tuned to the blog next week as we publish posts about some brand new Member Assembler features we're rolling out and for a schedule of upcoming Member Assembler focused webinars. Both are great opportunities to learn more about how our tools can help you prepare for your future CSA programs and really stay ahead of the class!

As one season ends and another begins, you might be thinking about ways to improve your CSA program. Perhaps you've been considering using Member Assembler to make your CSA sign-up faster and your program management easier. If you'd like to learn more about what Member Assembler can do, join us online to see it in action. Through this Fall we'll be offering live online demonstrations every Wednesday afternoon. This is a great chance for you to see the inside of Member Assembler and learn how the system can work for you, so sign up now.

Each demonstration will include a 20-30 minute live walk-through of how Member Assembler functions and will include highlights of some of it's most useful features. Afterwords, there will be time for Q & A, so you can ask us more specific questions about the software. Each session is limited to 10 farmers, so everyone is sure to get the chance to join in the discussion.

The retention rate is a key metric for a successful CSA program because it very accurately measures member happiness - satisfied members come back year after year - and determines how much effort and expenditure must be undertaken each Spring to attract new members. If your CSA can retain most of your members from year to year, there is little marketing to do and less member education each year because members know how to be CSA members. This was an important topic at the CSA Expert Exchange and something we need to continue to explore. It seems the farmers I talk to acknowledge that this is an important metric, but are unsure how to measure their rate and what they can do to nudge this rate higher.

There are a lot of different reasons that a CSA member leaves a CSA and the farmer does not have control over all of them. A few members move each year; some people are on vacation much of the summer, so a CSA doesn't make sense; some kids won't eat vegetables; and some members just like to try different CSAs each year. However, there is a percentage of the retention rate that a farmer can affect by delivering high quality produce, excellent customer service, and high community involvement, among other factors. I plan to keep exploring this issue this Fall by talking with managers of high retention CSAs and see if I can extract a little bit of their secret sauce. I'll report back here on the blog, so stay tuned.

Calculating Retention Rates in Member Assembler

Before evaluating how to improve a retention rate, you will need to what your current retention rate is. We have just built and released a new statistics tool in Member Assembler that calculates the retention rate of your CSA, assuming you have at least two seasons worth of membership data in the system. Find this new reporting under: Member Assembler / statistics / retention.

The report will then give an overall retention number (ie, what percentage of memberships in Season A also joined Season B) and break that down by pickup location, length of membership, and member types.

Welcome back to the We Love Our Farmers photo series! We love hearing about what's happening on the Small Farm Central farms from our farmers, but we love seeing it in their websites even more. In this edition, we feature the clever labeling of Scott Arbor's CSA offerings. Quite a helpful way to let their customers know what is what!

"This is our weekly CSA share harvested for delivery on June 15th. We take a photo of the share and send with our weekly newsletter/reminder. The email goes out Friday evening to get our CSA members ready to pickup, eat and enjoy what our farm is bringing them on Saturday morning. It also serves to let them know what they can check off their shopping list for the week and also helps them identify unknown veggies. For this week, we educate our members on how to eat and make use of carrot tops."Joshua, Scott Arbor

Ever wonder how you can stop customers from squeezing the tomatoes you bring to market each week? Why not ask a fellow farmer? You might get a great answer like this one:

"I put up a big laminated sign that says: Do you like it rough? Tomatoes don't. Please be gentle."

That was one of the suggestions posted to the CSA Farmer Discussion Facebook group that Small Farm Central created this past March. With over 300 members, it's a great place to poll other farmers and get answers to your questions from people who've "been there".

Here is a preview of some of the topics of discussion that have popped up recently:

CSA Program Expansion Poll

Farmers weigh in about scaling up and make suggestions about how many CSA shares you can expect from one acre of land.

Farm Tour Risks

Dirty Little Secrets

Farmers sometimes eat worse than their customers! How to feed yourself well when you are busy working hard to feed others.

In Times of Bad Weather

What to do when your CSA customers are dissatisfied with the season's offerings and forget about the conditions of your member agreement.

...and more!

The group is kept private so that it stays focused and allows farmers to have candid conversations with their peers, but it's easy to join the conversation. Simply click this link: http://www.facebook.com/groups/306541762795660/, log into your Facebook account, and click the "Join Group" button to be part of the discussion!

Back in June, Small Farm Central made a special offer of free website reviews to the first 25 farms that responded. I was charged with the task of reviewing these websites and providing feedback to the farms. These reviews primarily were focused on the nuts and bolts of a website - were there any broken links, bad image files, formatting, font or navigation issues? They were not intended to be critiques of the quality of the website and for the most part did not include me reading the website’s complete contents.

However, as I reviewed each website, I couldn’t help but read some of the content. In doing so, I got a sense of what these farmers were trying to do with their sites and I began to develop some more detailed content and concept recommendations to share with others. As I did more of these reviews, the concept of "the website as a narrative" really began to take form.

Websites are more than just information depositories; they are part of a larger marketing effort for your farm. Your website is there to tell your farm’s story and it’s important make sure that all of the parts of the story are there, that it is interesting and that it is understood. Having clear and factual information and having a nicely laid out website with good navigation are critical to imparting knowledge to potential customers, but it is the story that your website tells (or doesn’t tell) that will have an impact on whether or not they return. Here are some suggestions to help you craft your own narrative and share your unique story with your customers and communities.

Intoducing: Your Farm

The first important part is to provide the farm’s backstory. Is this a multi-generation farm that has been in the family for a hundred years? If so, tell us the story of the farm’s beginnings, provide old photographs, and talk about how the farm was passed down between the generations. If your farm is a cooperative of beginning farmers, tell us about what brought the original members of the group together, how you acquired your land, and what are your hopes for your endeavor.

Tips: In general, you don’t want to put your farm’s full life story on your website’s home page. Just a snippet will go there; two or three sentences that get to the essence of the farm. Then, create a page entitled something like “About the Farm” or “Our History” that includes the full story and add it as a main menu option in your navigation. Under that option, you’ll want to include a menu option for “Our Farmers” or “Farm Staff” where you can begin to talk about the individuals that make up your farm. You can aslo add a page here that gives more details about your farm's past, present, and future. More on that later.

Stories Need Characters

It is surprising to me how often I look at a farm’s website and they either have little or no information on the farmers and staff that work there. A page that says “Bob/Farmer” and a photo of a guy on a tractor doesn’t tell us much. Depending on your farm, you may have a wide range of characters - the farmers, the staff, interns, volunteers, the family pets, etc. These aren’t just models hired to market your farm, they are a vital part of your farm; so decide how they fit into your farm’s story and feature them on the site.

Tips: Deciding who to highlight in your staff listings can be a task. In general you’ll want to include the principal members of the farm (i.e. the owners), people that your customers will likely interact with (people who answer the phones and email, people who regularly work the markets) and other long term employees or even volunteers that people may associate with the farm. You don’t need to have everyone answer 20 questions, but there is something nice about providing a little more information for everyone than just their name and occupation. At a bare minimum, you will want to include the person’s first name, their role on the farm and a good quality photograph. Customers love to be able to put a face to a name and learn about who’s growing their food.

Keep it Simple

So you have your backstory and your setting along with your cast of characters, now it is time to tell the rest of the story, but how much is too much? While I’ve come across a number of websites that were underdeveloped and failed to adequately tell their story, there were some that attempted to say too much and as such caused their story to get lost amongst a sea of “too much information”. With a website it is easy to keep adding content, stuff that you feel is interesting or tangential to your farm’s story, but there comes a time when it becomes too much. Similarly, sometimes people will add the same content to multiple pages or under multiple menu items on their website in an effort to make sure the information is not missed. Unfortunately this often leads to clutter on your website that can make it more difficult for a visitor to find the information they are after. This can also lead to problems when you go to update information if you forget to change items on all the pages, leading to conflicting information on different pages.

Tips: So how do you know if you are going overboard? Here’s some some things to look out for:- Do you have lots of large blocks of text on your website? There’s a time and place for large pieces of writing, however if you have lots of them on your website, it can be a sign that you are rambling a bit. Simplify your text. Use lists. Link to articles elsewhere that speak to the information you are attempting to convey. If you do need to have a text heavy page, be sure to break it up with some photos, paragraph breaks, etc.- Are you having trouble fitting all of your menu items on your menu bar? Do your drop down menus have more than a handful of items in them? - Do you have the same information on multiple pages? Remember that with the magic of hyperlinks you can simply include information on one page and then link to that page elsewhere on your site. For example, have one page with all of your relevant CSA share information on it. If you talk about your CSA elsewhere, there’s no need to repeat the information, just have a link to your CSA page.

Make It Clear

In line with keeping things simple, you also want to make sure you have consistent use of language and that you define the technical terms that you use on your site. One farm I reviewed used the term “members” on one section of their site and then used “shareholders” on another. I was left wondering if these were two names for the same individuals or if they were two separate groups. Make sure you don’t leave your website users confused about the information you present.

Tips: There are terms such as organic, naturally-grown, free-range that can have various meanings to your customers. Some of these, such as organic, have specific legal definitions. Because of that, you probably don’t need to detail what that means directly on your website (but you should link to information about the standards you meet to be certified.) However, if you use more general language (i.e. “we use all-natural growing techniques”), it is worth spelling out what you mean by that.

Review and Re-visit

As most writers will probably tell you, the best way to get feedback on your writing is to get somebody else to read it and ask for their thoughts. Your website is no different. Find someone - a friend or a customer perhaps - and ask them to review your site. Then use their feedback to make your site better. To help them review try asking them the following questions: 1. Is the information clear and concise?2. What is your sense of what I'm are trying to convey through my website?3. Do you think the site does a good job of telling my farm’s story?4. Do you have any questions that they could not find the answers too? Is anything missing?

Tips: Re-visit your own site regularly and review what you’ve created. Does it still say what you want it to say? What can you add or change on your site to reflect the evolving nature of your farm? Remember: Your story keeps growing. Regularly posting blog entries, new photos and updated information are crucial to keeping your narrative engaging & alive.

We Can Help!

Feeling overwhelmed? Small Farm Central is offering Advanced Website Reviews for $99 through the month of August. This service includes a more in-depth assessment of your website, a short phone consultation, and a hour's worth of worth of labor from SFC staff towards making the adjustments you need. Call 412-567-3864 or email support@smallfarmcentral.com for more information.

Welcome to the fifth edition of the We Love Our Farmers photo series! We love hearing about what's happening on the Small Farm Central farms from our farmers, but we love seeing it in their websites even more. In this edition, we feature the Angelic Organics field team, hard at work!

"Angelic Organics field team transplants onions with soil block transplanter, late April, 2013, northern Illinois. Field team coordinator Jon Fagan (left) and machinery manager Primo (Jesus) Briano inspect the planter for depth and press wheel tension. Growing manager Chris Voss (right) and fertility/Biodynamics manager Andrew Stewart on the transplanter. Veteran equipment operator Pollo (Eduardo) Casique on the tractor. We had two soil block transplanters going that nice weather weekend, and put in about 60,000 seedlings total. We got caught up fast. Why fast? Because this group has 42 years of combined experience working at Angelic Organics."- John Peterson, Angelic Organics Farm

Whether you start your season in March or May, it seems that our North American farmers have passed the halfway point in their growing season. As August marks the last summer month, many farmers are setting their sights on the Fall harvest and the holiday season that follows. It is still a busy time, and we know not many of our farmer friends are thinking about how to improve their websites as they pack CSA boxes and pick tomatoes for market...but they should!

Us folks here at Small Farm Central love our farmers as much as we love the websites we help them build, and so consider it our job to remind you not to neglect your most important marketing tool when your focus has shifted from promotion to production. Here are a few easy ways to make sure your website stays just as fresh as your crops:

Show...

Summer is a great time to take photos of your farm. The days are bright, everything is green & growing and there is plenty of work being done! Getting into the habit of regularly taking photos will make adding new content to your website easy. Now with cell phones getting better and better, you might already be carrying a camera in your pocket. Take it out once a day to snap a picture and soon you will have a showcase of images to show your customers what you've been up to.

...and Tell

Most Small Farm Central websites are equipped with a blog feature that makes it easy for you to post updates about your farm right on your website. Don't be scared of the word "blog", you can spend as much or as little time writing your posts as you want. Even simply displaying your newest farm photo with a short caption is enough to get people to visit your site and see what's new. If you don't have a blog, send out an email once a month with updates, photos, and a link to you website so your customers can see even more news.

Open Your Gates

More and more people are interested in visiting where their food comes from and taking part in on-farm activities. In the U.S., agritourism is a growing niche of the tourism industry and includes farm stays, you-pick operations, and everything in between. While some of the more advanced ventures will require the appropriate permits, insurance coverage, and other legal procedures, there are also simple things that you can do. For example, you can host farm tours, educational classes, volunteer days and customer/member appreciation events. Here is a great Farm Tour Guide from the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board about giving farm tours, which can be adapted to any kind of farm, dairy or otherwise.

The relationship between farmers and the people they feed creates a unique and strong bond. Take the time to cultivate that relationship and you will have loyal customers who will be your farm's biggest fans, which is the best marketing tool there is!